[Riko Kowski]

Coming from TVPaint, I was curious if there’s a way to highlight multiple frames in the Xsheet, copy them elsewhere, and then reverse the frames so they play in reverse order. I sometimes use this for cycles and find it quite useful. Does this feature exist in the program, or is there another way to achieve this?

Thanks!

[Niels]

Hi Riko,

You can easily select a series of drawings in the X-Sheet (just click the first thumb, hold Shift and click the last). You can now do normal copy and paste using Ctrl C and Ctrl V (Cmd C and Cmd V on Mac).

You can also cycle such a selection. The menu item is Edit > Cycle Selected Drawings Once.

Reversing the selection, is a feature not implemented yet, but it is planned for the near future. Until then, you will have to copy/paste the drawings one by one to get them in reverse order.

Note, that when you copy drawings like this, the copies are “clones”, meaning that they are linked to the original and will update if the original is changed. This is great for many reasons. And if you need a clone to lose its link, you simply make it “original”, by hitting O (while on the drawing).

I hope this makes sense. I’ll be happy to answer more questions or comments!

Thanks,
Niels

[Riko Kowski]

Is not deal breaker, is not something i use to often though glad it is under consideration! I have been tinkering with the software for most of the day and enjoying it thus far, the cloning i do appreciate a lot and does help with the flow of things. I guess the only questions i have right now would be is there a way to dock the X sheet to the right hand side of the screen as opposed to the left ( I did find i could make it a floating window which was good enough for the moment), and is there a way to copy frames to another location on the Xsheet without them being inherently clones, or do i clone then push O to achieve that only?

Also gotta say I really appreciate how clean and spacious the UI is, every other program i have ever used is rather claustrophobic in comparison. Thanks again!

[Niels]

Sure! In Preferences/Settings you have the option to have the X-Sheet to the left or right.

After copying your drawings, you can easily turn them all original, by having them all selected (using the shift method) and hitting O – which works on all of them at once.

Actually, in my internal development version, we do have a duplicate (as original) feature, so you don’t need to do this “copy – hit O” thing. This will be publicly available in our next release, which is probably in a month or two.

Thanks for appreciating the clean interface. 🙂 It’s something that is very important to me. And this is why I tend to be little hesitant about implementing too many clever ideas (even though they may be easy/quick to do). You mentioned the metronome. I definitely see its use. It would be great for some. But also it would participate in cluttering up the software. Sorry for using your idea as the example, and I mean, that one thing probably wouldn’t clutter much, but if I gave in to too many small features like that, people would tend to be confused and overwhelmed, rather than enjoying the calm and get in focus. For me, getting in the zone when animating, is super important. The less distractions the better. I hope you see what I mean.

[Riko Kowski]

Keeping the program simple and too the point is likely the best route in all honesty, i have done production on almost all animation software over the last 7 years and have a found that most of them have become so bloated that it makes doing anything ( or finding anything ) a pain. I was recently forced to moved over to Linux and overall this is looking like it will be a good replacement for most of what i do.

Am very anxious to see where this project goes and will definitely be purchasing it when that version becomes available!

[Niels]

Thank you so much! You say you were forced to Linux, I hope Animation Paper can ease your transition somehow. 😉 I am actually quite fond of Linux, but I am most happy about supporting both Linux, Mac and Windows.

Thanks again!
Niels